My Musical Advent Calendar of 2018.

Merry Xmas.

For some reason (festive insanity? drunkenness? obsession with lists? maybe just a love of Yule) I decided this year to run down my favourite twenty-five Xmas songs on Facebook, one a day.

It's hardly an exact list and there are some songs that sneaked in for reasons other than their association with the season to be jolly but, anyway, for your future delectation and Spotify playlists, this is how it all panned out.

25. Elton John - Step Into Christmas.

Nothing says Christmas like a Watford season ticket and some piano led glam pop.

Here's Reg from Pinner with a shoulder shakin' banger that would later be covered by The Wedding Present. It's got lalalas and sleigh bells but it's also got a decent riff. But what would you buy Elton, the man who has everything except a sense of perspective, for Christmas?

24. Half Man Half Biscuit - All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit.

"There was one in the gang who had Scalextric, and because of that he thought he was better than you".

A classic 'choon' that looks at the thorny issues of Subbuteo, doting parents, Czech football, and the disappointment of shit Xmas presents.

"It always took about fifteen billion hours to set the track up".

23. Bathtub Shitter - Little Drummer Boy.

Nothing says Christmas like a Japanese extreme grindcore band called Bathtub Shitter.

Thought I'd get this curio over and done with early doors. Quite a lot of their songs are actually about defecation but they also branch out into urination (Rest in Piss). This sounds exactly like you imagine it will. Alas, perhaps because shitting in the bathtub is naughty, I can't post a direct link - but you can cut and paste the http address below if you're curious!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HiDqQlgMW0

22. The Flaming Lips - Christmas at the Zoo.

"There wasn't any snow on Christmas eve and I knew what I should do. I thought I'd free the animals all locked up at the zoo. I opened up the fence where the peacocks were, the llamas were unleashed, the snakes and seals could all get out, but they refused to leave".

A track from 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic, remarkably The Flaming Lips SEVENTH album. The Lips can err towards the twee at times, it puts some people off but I think it adds to their charm and:-

(a) twee is ok at Xmas

(b) I interviewed Wayne Coyne once (did I mention it? Only about a hundred times) and he was absolutely lovely.

21. The Kinks - Father Christmas.

"The last time I played Father Christmas I stood outside a department store. A gang of kids came over and mugged me and knocked my reindeer to the floor".

Ray Davies in 1977 dressed up as Santa and singing a faintly ridiculous song about getting mugged, buying a machine gun, and inequality. Ho ho ho indeed.

I reckon Ray was having a stab at doing a Xmas punk song, a theory borne out by the b-side which is called Prince of the Punks. The charts remained unbothered.

20. Cocteau Twins - Frosty the Snowman.

Grangemouth's finest proto-shoegazers with their version of the heartbreaking tale of "a jolly happy soul" who used to "laugh and play" and "dance around" but, eventually had an altercation with a "traffic cop" (I'd never noticed that bit before) and disappeared for ever "over the hills of snow".

I used to like the Frosty the Snowman cartoons they'd show on Christmas morning.

19. The Buzzcocks - Orgasm Addict.

"You even made it with the lady who puts the little plastic bobbins on the Christmas cakes".

It's a change to the published programme today* but I don't think anyone's gonna complain about either the breach of protocol or the fact that this is not the most festive song ever. Unless you and the family like to pour gravy over your roast potatoes while discussing "stains on your jeans", "beating your meat to pulp", and, er, "makin' our with school kids".

RIP Pete Shelley. Thanks for the music. No doubt there will be a few singalongs between now and Xmas.

*Pete Shelley's death was announced the evening before this was inserted into the list.

18. Kurtis Blow - Christmas Rapping.

"A red-suited dude with a friendly attitude and a sleigh full of goodies for the people on the block. Got a long white beard, maybe looks kinda weird, and if you ever see him he could give you quite a shock".

Here's Kurtis Blow from Harlem way back in 1980 sporting a pretty natty suit and shirt collars that could take your eye out. This actually came out in '79 so it's about as old school as hip-hop gets.

"The dude in red's back at the Pole up north where everything is cold. But if he were right here tonight he'd say 'Merry Christmas and to all a good night'".

17. Kunt & The Gang - Kuntish Christmas*

The most NSFW selection of the whole yule is this absolutely awful song about lending your mate Les a strimmer.

Takes a while to get going but, oh my, when it does.

*It went a bit tits up round here (for some reason) and I posted a track by both The Butthole Surfers (Sweatloaf) and Kunt & The Gang for number 17 but K&tG is the more festive (!) so I've gone for that here. Even though YouTube have been removing K&TG videos and leaving me with just the 'kuntaoke' one to post!

16. Everly Brothers - Christmas Eve Can Kill You.

"The cold and empty evening hangs around me like a ghost. I listen to my footsteps in the snow. The sound of one man walkin' through the snow can break your heart".

If you're gonna top yourself to mark Jesus' birthday, and why not, it's as good day as any, maybe you'll want to whack on this sad banger from the legendary siblings of Shenandoah. Iowan doom doo-wop at its finest.

15. LCD Soundsystem - Christmas Will Break Your Heart.


I could write a lot of words about this but I think James Murphy has done it for me.*

*I was somewhat sad when I posted this one initially!

14. Lord Invader and the Calypso Rhythm Boys - Christmas Story.

Some upbeat call & response calypso to get you into the festive mood.

13. The Sonics - Don't Believe in Christmas.

"I don't believe in Christmas. I don't believe in Christmas. I don't believe in Christmas 'cause I didn't get nothin' last year".

Tacoma's finest garage rockers with a short and sprightly tale of trying "to get a little kiss" off "a pretty little miss" at Xmas, only to be called a "jerk" and told "mistletoe don't work".

Possibility they've heard Chuck Berry.

12. The Fall - Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.

"Glory to the new-born King! Peace on earth, and mercy mild".

Nothing says Xmas like a jolly red faced man and Mark E Smith was definitely one of those. On the year we lost him it'd be a shame not to include at least one of his festive offerings in our countdown.

11. The Futureheads - Christmas was Better in the Eighties.

Very much in the novelty bracket (but, hey, Xmas right) and very much of its time but I still remain a soft spot for The Futureheads and that's why they're the final act to sing praise to Santa (or Christ, go on then) before we reach our Top Ten. I've got my list in front of me and I'm checking it twice. Need to find out who's naughty or nice.

10. Teenage Fanclub - December.

"My mind is full of several things resembling a thought. I'll take this chance to tell my friends what I'm thinking of".

Definitely had that feeling, and the rest of the lyrics all ring true. There's certainly no fat on them. It may not be overly Xmassy but it's a better song than many above it in the list, and certainly it feels at least seasonal.

Seasonally sad but beautiful too. It's a Gerald Love composition so it's fitting that this should crop up on the year he bade an emotional farewell to the band after nearly thirty years.

"I wanted to assassinate December"!

9. Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas

"There's a world outside your window and it's a world of dread and fear. Where a kiss of love can kill you, and there's death in every tear, and the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom".

Jeez, had forgotten how doom laden some of the lyrics were. Certainly a strange fit for a song that became the biggest selling UK single ever (until Princess Di died and Elton John took over) but when you figure in the personnel of the original Band Aid and what the record was raising money for it's no surprise.

What was a surprise that it was actually a really good song. I was sixteen at the time and transitioning from a Smash Hits to an NME reader but still the idea of members of Culture Club, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Wham!, Kool and the Gang, The Police (and let's not forget that Jody Watley was on it) was a pretty big deal. It's probably because of my age but it seems, looking back, to have been a great era for strange pop stars, and, due to TOTP still being appointment viewing, ones that almost everybody instantly recognised. Definitely because of my age I remember it fondly. It was the first Xmas after I'd left school and I came to London and bought myself a really nice jumper in a shop on Oxford Street which seemed quite exciting.

8. The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping.

"Bah Humbug, now that's too strong!".

Experimental post-punk from Akron, this one's seen by some as an 'alternative' festive favourite, but in truth you're as likely to hear it in the aisles of Sainsbury's as Paul McCartney's 'Wonderful Christmas Time'.

It's still a good tune though, a brassy discursive tale of forgetting the cranberries, dashing through the snow, and turning down all of one's Xmas Eve invites.

"The perfect gift for me would be completions and connections left from last year".

"Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Couldn't miss this one this year".

7. Ronettes- Sleigh Ride.

"Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you".

Just the tune to sing while getting splashed by cars driving through puddles on the Kentish Town Road, as I did last night - in the pouring rain. Not even snow!

One of the more traditionally festive singalongs of our countdown sees the NYC girls tackle Leroy Anderson and Mitchell Parish's 'light orchestra standard'. Later covered by The Spice Girls, TLC, and S Club Juniors. This version first appeared on the 1963 album 'A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector', an album which also included versions of White Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, and, er, Marshmallow World.

"Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two".

6. The Fall - Jingle Bell Rock.

"Post office, rot in hell. Friday night on Oxford Street, walking with green M&S bags. Join them up with old beef and sprouts".

71 seconds of MES (RIP) yelping his way through Beal and Boothe's seasonal standard and, of course, adding his own unique slant and lyrics.

"That's the Jingle Bell Rock".

5. Half Man Half Biscuit - It's Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas.

"How did I guess you were going to express your disdain at the crane with the bright fairy lights"?
As correctly guessed by Darren, HMHB make their second (and final?) appearance in the Christmas countdown with this lovely track from 2000's Trouble over Bridgwater. I love how it segues into I Saw Three Ships at the end. I think, finally, I am feeling festive.

But even if I was not - "All the same, here’s a card for your boring facade".

4. The Long Blondes - Christmas is Cancelled.

"Don't take your jacket off. This is not your home. Just raise a glass to two more people spending Christmas Day alone".

Arch indie pop from Sheffield's snappily attired Long Blondes in 2004 tells of 'snow', 'late night shopping', 'Christmas stockings', rejection, regret, and loneliness. A 'festive fuss' and no mistake, but one they almost make sound fun.

"Skilfully avoiding things that happened near a year ago".

3. The Pretenders - 2000 Miles.

"Sometimes in a dream you appear outside under the purple sky, diamonds in the snow sparkle, our hearts were singing. It felt like Christmas time".

Chrissie Hynde's soft rock paean to Santa and the season didn't do that much for me back in '83 when it came out but I've grown to love it more as the years go by and, this year, I'm marking my new found love of it by, myself, travelling, (more than) two thousand miles to celebrate the season.

"I'll think of you wherever you go".

2. Low - Just Like Christmas.

"The beds were small but we felt so young".

Aw, this'll melt your heart if you have one. Fond memories of listening to Low's Christmas songs several years after they came out in 1999 but this, the obvious one I guess, is my favourite.

"It was just like Christmas".

"It was just like Christmas".

"It was just like Christmas".

"It was just like Christmas".

1.Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You.

"Santa Claus won't make me happy with a toy on Christmas day. I just want you for my own more than you could ever know".

Hey, come on. You didn't think Bathtub Shitter were number one did you?

I'm not even a Mariah fan (or even a Christian for that matter) but I love this song and, in that, it encapsulates all that is good and right about Christmas:- seeing the good in people you don't see eye to eye with, spending time with loved ones, missing (desperately) other loved ones, and lots of bells ringing.

Oh, and a beautiful woman in a Santa outfit. When I used to see this on TOTP2 I assumed it to be much older than it is and was surprised to find out it came out in 1994 and was held off the Xmas number one spot by East 17's Stay Another Day. I looked at the rest of the top ten that Christmas. It's dire - Boyzone, Celine Dion, Jimmy Nail, Rednex, Bon Jovi (in correct company), Zig and Zag,  and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

So, thanks to Mariah Carey, of all people, for making Xmas sound really rather wonderful, incredibly romantic, and full of snowstorms. I can be a grinch (though, hopefully, not a Scrooge) at times but if this ol' festive malarkey is to have any meaning whatsoever then that meaning should be to spend time, physical or mental, with your loved ones, to take time out to think of those less fortunate and those you are unable to spend time with for whatever reason, and to hopefully give out more love than you could ever hope to receive in return.

With that, I raise a glass of red wine to my lips, adjust my party hat, pop another mint chocolate in my mouth and wish you all a cool Yule and more love in 2019 than you'll know what to do with.

XXXX

Albums of the Year 2018.

At the end of 2005 I was working in an office and most people had finished for Xmas. I was pretty bored to be honest. So I decided to put together some kind of metacritic list of the albums of the year.

I chose five publications and/or websites that had listed 50 (or more) of their best albums of the year. Selecting the top 50 I awarded 50 points for 1st, 49 for 2nd, and so on down to 1 point for 50th. I then crunched the numbers and made a list of the top 30 scoring.

This silly piece of time wasting proved to be quite popular so I continued and have done every year since. I used to send the e-mails round a few mates who've either expressed an interest or I'm trying to impress in some way. Since leaving my old job I've lost all the lists from 2005-2015. If anyone has them saved please get in touch.

Now I have a blog (and I've left my job) I'm gonna use this to disseminate the data. So, here we are, no photos, just a list of 2018's Top 30. Enjoy (or not)....

1.Low - Double Negative
2.Pusha T - Daytona
3.Sons of Kemet - Your Queen is a Reptile
4.Janelle Monae - Dirty Computer
5.Christine and the Queens - Chris
6.Julia Holter - Aviary
7.Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Hope Downs
8.Spiritualized - And Nothing Hurt
9.Kamasi Washington - Heaven and Hell
10.Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
11.Gazelle Twin - Pastoral
12.Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel
13.Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour
14.Tirzah - Devotion
15.The Breeders - All Nerve
16.Senyawa - Sujud
17.Let's Eat Grandma - All Ears
18.Young Fathers - Cocoa Sugar
19.Idles - Joy as an Act of Resistance
20.Kurt Vile - Bottle It In
21.Inescure Men - Insecure Men
22.Paul Weller - True Meanings
23.Yo La Tengo - There's A Riot Going On
24.Gruff Rhys - Babelsberg
25.Suede - The Blue Hour
26.Elvis Costello and the Imposters - Look Now
27.Ty Segall - Freedom's Goblin
28.JPEGMAFIA - Veteran
29.SOPHIE - Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides
30. Yves Tumor - Safe in the Hands of Love

View the 2017 list here.
View the 2016 list here.

sources:-

Pitchfork
the Quietus
The Wire
Uncut
Mojo 

Fleapit revisited:Shoplifters.

"Ten quid for the lot? We pay fuck all" - Shoplifting, The Slits.

The idea of the 'family' can be more fluid than ever before now, it seems. Yet, polite society may still affect a condescending, or disapproving, glance towards a family that doesn't quite tick certain boxes, fall within a few established parameters. I've never been to Japan but it's long been suggested, as Westernised countries go, the idea of keeping up appearances there is considered of the upmost importance.

Building from this rather broad assumption, what happens when a family, of sorts, fails to behave as a family should? What if they break both rules and laws and, yet, at the same time, prove themselves more capable of love and compassion, and fun, than more nuclear families, ones that have become emotionally damaged by the expectations, and aspirations, society demands of them?

That's the premise of Hirokazu Kore-eda's new film Shoplifters and if it starts a little slowly, confusingly even, then that is surely by intent. It's like when you first arrive in a new city, or start a new job. You don't know your way around, you don't know people's names. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time and a lot of the pleasure, and satisfaction, comes with working out which road goes where, who connects to who, and, eventually, getting beneath the surface of either the city or your new colleagues. Finding what's within.

We're introduced to Osamu (Lily Franky) and Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) who live as a couple in one of Tokyo's less moneyed suburbs, along with Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), Shota - an awestruck, and handsome, young boy (Kairi Jo), and the family matriarch Grandma (Kirin Kiki) who's often seen slurping up a bowl of noodles, knitting, or dispensing pearls of wisdom and sympathy in equal measure.

It's unclear to us just how these people are related, and relate, to each other but they seem to live a fairly harmonious, if meagre, existence. Shota sleeps in a cupboard, Aki and Grandma curl up together in a single bed, and Osamu showers in what looks like a pantry. To keep them in food and lodging they get by, mostly, on a life of crime. Osamu takes Shota out to supermarkets and local stores to rob groceries etc; and Nobuyo supplements her paltry wages at a laundry by helping herself to whatever's been left in the customer's pockets.

Aki's contribution is to earn a few extra bucks stripping down to her bra and knickers (no fingers down the knickers though she's told by her boss, it's not that kind of establishment) and thrusting herself, with dead eyes, at faceless men behind a perspex screen. The difference between the look of Aki's face at work and Aki's face at home cuddling up to Grandma, drinking tea, and chatting says as much about the dehumanising effect of both work and sexual objectification as a hundred academic theses.

One evening Osamu and Shota spot a lost, cold, hungry little girl with scars up her arm who refuses to talk. Yuri comes back with them and, soon, she's accepted both into the family and their shoplifting racket. Her hair is cut and she changes her name to Lin. Gradually, she comes out of her shell, developing a close emotional bond with Nobuyo, a maternal figure, and a playful sibling like relationship with Shota.

But local news stories tell us that Yuri/Lin has been reported as a lost child and has become something of a cause celebre in the Japanese capital. As we slowly begin to see the dynamics between this disparate group of characters, brought together either by chance, necessity, or love, we also begin to wonder how their legally perilous lifestyle will play out. Our suspicion remains that it will not end well. No good deed, remember, ever goes unpunished - and if you want a quote for the not so good deeds, it's worth remembering the evergreen theory that if you steal £5 they arrest you, if you steal £5,000,000 they give you a peerage. These people are not stealing millions.

The story unfolds without moralising and, at times it feels, without any grand narrative at all. There are a selection of set pieces and in watching each of these we eke out a little bit more about each of the key player's back stories and motivations. We witness some playful afternoon sex between the passionate and nurturing Nobuyo and the childlike, almost chaste, Osamu, we see the family bonding on a day out at the beach, holding hands, jumping the waves, and opening up to each other, and we see a death, a death that is handled both with compassion and respect and, at the same time, treated as just another part of life, another obstacle to be surmounted before moving on. Most of all, we see confusing, conflicted adult lives as if viewed through the eyes of a child.

While a child's eye view of the world can, at times, be terrifying it can also be beautiful. There's a sense of wonder, a feeling of awe, that the years can scrape away from us. By no means does Shoplifters paint a picture of tourist Tokyo but, with the aisles of shops, the markets, and the knot of streets that Shota and Yuri/Lin are often seen running through, it gives us that sense of the world as our own personal adventure playground that you remember from your own childhood.

This gives the film a romantic, nostalgic air, that works nicely with, rather than rubs up against, its austere reality. Not only does the film always look wonderful, each individual performance is fantastic. They all feel absolutely real. Even, after a fashion, the slightly ludicrous Lily Franky as Osamu. Sakura Ando and Maya Matsuoka give Nobuyo and Aki grace and dignity while at the same time imbuing them both with a sense of that aforesaid childish wonder.

But it is, I think, the kids the film really belongs too. It feels like we're learning the story along with them. Looking through their eyes at the adult world rather than through the adult gaze at the world of children like so many other films. As Yuri/Lin, Miyu Sasaki will melt your heart. There is a sadness in her that you're desperate to see lifted and when she sees the sea for the first time you can't help but share in her wonder.

As her older 'brother', Shota, Kaira Jo is harder to read. He's at that age where he's beginning to make up his own mind about what's right and wrong, where life starts to become a whole different ball of confusion, and a decision he makes based on these new realities will become the pivot on which the whole story will take a startling 180 degree turn.

Perhaps the only one in the entire two hour running time. Shoplifters is not a film full of grand reveals, shocks, or action sequences even though the story it tells could so easily have been filmed that way. It's to Kore-eda's great credit that he's created a more nuanced take on a quite extraordinary tale, one in which it's not always clear exactly where our sympathies lie, and the distinction between good guys and bad guys becomes so blurred it's almost invisible.

It's a brave piece of film making that credits its audience with the intelligence to make their own decisions and it's such a well executed piece of cinema that some hours after leaving the theatre this particular audience member was still deeply ruminating on the whole experience.

Lines of Work:Cartoon Time with Jeremy Banx.

There may have been many lines drawn, and many lines delivered, at the last Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub event of 2018 but there was certainly no line to get in. It was the most sparsely attended event I'd been to so far at The Star & Garter (was it the rain or, perhaps, did people have Christmas parties to attend?) and that seemed, initially, to put cartoonist Jeremy Banx a tiny bit off his stride.

It could just be that he took a while warming up but, either way, it was only a brief shame. Once Jeremy hit his groove it turned out to be a far more interesting evening than I'd expected, something that often happens with these Skeptics and Fortean events. It's why I keep going.

Banx is an award winning cartoonist who has contributed to Private Eye, the Wall Street Journal, Oink! (remember that?), The New Statesman, and, regularly these days, the Financial Times. He let it be known he's been trying to get a cartoon published in the highly respected New Yorker but so far he's been knocked back by that particular publication.

The talk started off with quite a lot of technical stuff, breaking down the cartoon making process to the nth degree, and even explaining how very obvious jokes work. Which kind of defeats the point of cartoons, surely? I thought I was in for a long evening and I remembered Rich Hall's dismissive critique of political cartoonists as well as my own childhood, when my personal festive cartoon preference was for Raccoons on Ice or Frosty the Snowman rather than witty comments about global warming or the minutiae of parliamentary deal making.

But I was being too harsh. Banx's undoubted enthusiasm and knowledge of the subject meant I warmed to him, and when he started showing us some actual examples of his cartoons - well, what do you know? They were pretty good. I even chuckled a couple of times. Others guffawed. We were just a titter and a chortle short of a Beano strip.

Of course we live in highly politically charged times and Banx, as he signs his work, has inevitably found fruitful source material in the twin disasters of Donald Trump and Brexit. Yet they act as a double edged sword, both being so incontestably ludicrous and laughable that it's quite difficult to actually lampoon them. Trump supporters and Brexiteers are so patently ridiculous that they provide an almost perfectly satirical running commentary of their own daft ideas nearly every time they open their mouths.

Also, things happen so quickly with them that, half the time, it's difficult to remember what was happening even fairly recently. So regular are the sackings and resignations these days that it can be tricky to recall who was in Trump's White House or May's cabinet just a few months ago? Remember the idea of a Brexit festival to celebrate what a great 'success' Brexit would be? I just about do. But you don't hear much about it anymore. Banx imagined the festival as a line of gullible voters waiting to ascend a helter skelter off a cliff edge. Excited perhaps by the ride but either wilfully ignorant of their destination and simply unbothered by it.

Other works need a caption and Banx suggested, and it was hard to disagree, that though non-captioned works tended to be stronger they were a lot more difficult do do. Or at least get right. Thus ended the 'to caption or not to caption' debate, yet there was quite a lot of talk about. How much detail to include? How many people? How much background? Did the lines need to be straight? Banx decided it was best to pare it right down and not to worry too much about accuracy. The key thing was in getting the message across as quickly as possible and, often, in a very small space.

As well as taking on the big stories of our time, Banx also picked out smaller ones, ones that may be particularly FT friendly, like the arrest and imprisonment of Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn for false accounting. Banx said it took him quite a while to twig that Nissan made motor vehicles and there was a small chance Ghosn could be taken to jail in one of his own machines. Whether or not Nissan made prison vans was neither here nor there, the point had been made.

Global warming, Canadian cannabis legislation, and the election of the extreme right wing Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil was all touched on. The latter, in a powerful image that showed Christ the Reedemer in Rio covering his eyes in horror, or shame, at what the Brazilian people had done. I couldn't help thinking it reminded me of something similar I saw showing the Statue of Liberty despairing following the election of Trump.

Plagiarism cropped up in the Q&A following the talk when Banx said, again I agreed, that it's not uncommon for similar cartoonists to come up with similar ideas and responses to the same news stories and it's only when it starts to happen repeatedly it becomes a concern.

Banx said that he, like almost everyone else, was getting bored of Brexit and Trump. Fuck, I'm bored of them seeping into every fucking blog I write, but I didn't fucking vote for them. The people who voted for either of these things who then have the audacity to complain that they hear too much about them really need a good hard look in the mirror. Assuming they have a reflection they may realise that if you vote to have something, don't keep fucking complaining that people mention that thing you wanted. For fuck's sake.

Banx's day seems to consist of a lot of Googling, a lot of reading news stories (possibly not great for his own mental health), and a lot of trying to find humour in often very serious subjects (America's horrendous gun death statistics, for example) which may help to alleviate the pain caused by being subjected to such regular accounts of misery and cruelty.

To lift his spirits he draws pictures of dogs sniffing each other's arseholes with wine tasting notes attached. The grim reaper too. He draws the grim reaper a lot. It kind of breaks up the ennui. He's even drawn a 'reaper' pulling a cracker with one of his trademark, big hootered, men off the street. Which was both topical and festive of him.

I came away thinking that Banx was an all round good egg. He may have laboured under the illusion that people in Brazil speak a language called Brazilian but that was more than balanced out by his hilarious description of attending a cricket match aged just four.

He'd been taken by his father who had neglected to explain the rules of cricket or, in fact, anything about the game. The toddler Banx observed a man reading a newspaper, another man fast asleep, and some other men in white running around (a tiny bit) on a patch of a green and he couldn't work out if he was supposed to be watching them or they were supposed to be watching him.

It must have set a theme for his life and it was one I could certainly identify with. A lot of the time we're just watching other people and trying to make sense of the weird, random things they're doing and why they're doing them. It works with cricket, it works with Brexit, it works with life, and it even works with cartoons.

Why would somebody draw them? To earn a living and to try and make some sense out of the peculiar. essentially meaningless, lives we have to live? With the reapers? Maybe to try and soften the blow of the one unifying thing we can all go through together. Death.

One Banx cartoon showed a swimming pool ladder descending into a freshly dug grave, a childlike way of understanding what death means but perhaps as good as any. It was certainly a great way to underline what it is to be a cartoonist. It is to be an adult trying to see things through the eyes of the confused children we all once were. Trying to regain that kind of headspace.

When I was child I hated mince pies and I still do now so, generous though the offer of some free specimens undoubtedly was, I steered clear of the monstrosities. I'd filled up, as ever, at Goddard's pie & mash earlier. Hopefully, it wasn't my last supper.

Thanx to Banx.

The Future Ain't What it Used to Be:Learning to Accept Mortality at the V&A.

"The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck" - Paul Virilio, 1999.

Herbert Bayer - The Lonely Metropolitan (1932)

It seems a luxury, an indulgence even, to think about the future in such uncertain times. Uncertain politically, uncertain financially, uncertain personally, and uncertain as regards the future of the planet even. There's an overwhelming desire, and one I felt quite keenly during my visit to the V&A's The Future Starts Here exhibition, to scream out loud. Until we can feed, house, clothe, and look after the people of the planet should we really be worrying about robots that can do the laundry, espresso machines that can be used in outer space, and 'smart curtains that track human emotions'?

Of course, there is more to some of these designs for the future than that and some may, either directly or indirectly, help with those urgent housing and feeding needs. Yet, The Future Starts Here was nearly as uncertain as the future itself. It was hard to get to grips with exactly what the curators were trying to say and I left, sadly, a little bit underwhelmed. If this is the future then I don't wanna live for ever, that's the way I like it, baby.

The exhibition is divided up into five, fairly tenuous, sections. Self, Public, Planet, Afterlife, and The Future Is... and each of those into smaller subsections, posing questions in turn vague or specific.

Vague questions include:-

What makes us human?

Does democracy still work?

Who wants to live forever?

and the more specifically worded are:-

If Mars is the answer, what is the question?

Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor?

Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks (BRETT) (2010-ongoing)

On the surface they sound like BIG questions but they're pretty tedious really. As are some, if not all, of the exhibits on show. The aforementioned robot that does the laundry, for example. Brett, for that's the robot's name, doesn't even do a better job than us humans at washing and drying. To be fair, 'he' has been included in the exhibition to show us just how far we have to go when it comes to mechanising certain fairly routine (to us) chores.

The way out of this conundrum would appear to be not just making robots more human but, at the same time, making us humans more robotic. We study our bodies now more than ever with clothes, jewellery, fitbits, and mobile phones that measure how many steps we take each day, how much we sleep, and even our oxygen intake.

While these help us monitor how much, or how little, physical exercise we get, isn't there also a danger that they increase our anxiety? We get stressed if we haven't done our 10,000 steps, slept a full seven hours, or eaten our 'five a day'. If we're worried about what we're putting into our bodies we can always have our food genetically modified. Salmon, like the one below, have been grown in Canada using GM to double their size. Is this a sustainable answer to decreasing stocks of wild fish, depleted by human demand, or should we just eat less fish and grow more veg? On top of that, people are uncertain about eating 'engineered' fish and so far it is illegal to export these megafish outside of Canada.

What of the software that's been developed, and used by employers like Amazon and Tesco, to keep tabs on their staff? Certainly, that should make anyone anxious, while at the same time eroding their sense of personal liberty. I worked for a company once that installed heat monitors beneath our desks to see how much time we spent away from them. They were sharp edged and ripped my knees to fuck but I was far more concerned with the dehumanising effect of them.

By the time I walked out on that job I felt I was a number, not a man. I felt I had as much value to the company as an office chair and if it was up to the management regime that had wrested control of my department I'd have been dismissed as quickly and unceremoniously as a broken chair, should they be able to outsource my work.

Fitbit - Fitbit Surge (2014)

Heather Dewey-Hagborg - Radical Love (2016)

Alexi Hobbs - Why Won't the Government Let You Eat Superfish (2014)

But it's not all doom and gloom. There's the Cheetah Xtreme carbon leg that Jonnie Peacock wore (a version of) to win the 100 metres during the Paralympics in both London and Rio de Janeiro, there's a cot that can rock your baby to sleep for you, there's tech designed to help with teaching in conflict zones, and there's a Ben Ten themed prosthetic hand that is worn by a six year old Yemeni boy who suffered serious injury during a house fire.

There's other stuff that we find useful, rather than vital. Most obviously, our smartphones. You only need to sit on a train and look around to realise that people are glued to them these days. That's both good and bad. It's not great if they're ignoring their kids, their friends, or the real world around them but, of course, if you have the entire internet in your hand it's hard not to keep looking at it.

There's a driverless lawnmower which would save time but take away for what some people is a very pleasurable experience, there's a camera which decides when to shoot for you - something I'd find very annoying, and then there's Alexa. The voice controlled assistant that is strangely popular with people who don't go on social media because they're worried their personal data is being mined. Work that one out!

Refugee Open Ware - Prosthetic hand (reproduction) (2017)

We have more connections to the world, to each other, than ever. But still we hear that there is an epidemic of loneliness. As our gadgets and tech learn to fulfill some of our needs are we letting other, more primal, needs and desires go unattended? If so, how might that pan out in the near future (assuming we have a planet left to live on) when machines become far more advanced? Will it be possible to live among the robots and have no human contact whatsoever? Would we even desire that? Would the robots let us? Might they feel lonely themselves if they have become so advanced they've developed emotions and are now being ignored? 

Don't ask me. I don't know. That's why I went to the damned exhibition in the first place. But, of course, the exhibition could not answer questions about the future. It could only ask them and speculate on possible, or even likely, developments. Can technology assist in finding solutions to the refugee crisis at a time when demagoguery is exacerbating it? Is the growing popularity of populist leaders we are seeing a threat to democracy itself and, if so, how will that affect the future of both tech and design? Will it be used to aid the populists and demagogues or will the resistance find smarter solutions?

Pussyhat Project - Pussy Power Hat (2017)

These are big, important, and currently unanswerable questions and while we can all celebrate small acts of defiance, witness the Pussy Power Hat as worn by many on last year's Women's Marches as a protest against Donald Trump's proud boasts of being able to use his power to get away with sexual assault, this exhibition fails when it comes to looking at the bigger picture.

It's important that things like that are here, and it does no harm that the exhibition touches on the dubious morality of Cambridge Analytica and bitcoin, the lack of affordable homes in the public sector, and even the vexed question of having an algorithm as a boss. Something Uber drivers are currently suffering with, due to the design of algorithms that, inevitably, perhaps even necessarily, are geared towards making the company very rich, rather than helping out either drivers of even customers.

Bitcoin Miner (2017)

The Collective - Old Oak (2015)

But for the most part, we get to see, maybe two exhibits or examples of each subject before we're swiftly ushered on to the next thing. As Ferris Bueller said "life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it". The future we're looking at here doesn't seem to have much time for the Ferris Buellers among us, the dreamers, the idlers, the romantics. It often looks like a mean, conservative future in which the only value is a numerical one. Number of years lived, number of steps walked, number of hours worked, and ultimately number of pounds, or bitcoin, accumulated.  

It looks like a world in which we're ever more determined to find new sources of power and sustainability but only so we can drain them in much the same way as we have done the planet's other resources. A world in which we could colonise other planets (just to destroy them), invent new animals (just to drive them to extinction), and monetize each and every aspect of our lives, leaving us with piles of cold hard cash (or more likely no cash and loads of gadgets we don't really need or want) and nobody to spend it on or with.

That's the depressing part of the exhibition, or one of the depressing parts. There's also lot of curious, seemingly quite irrelevant, stuff on show too. Stuff that doesn't quite fit into the remit or if it does, does so under very tenuous circumstances. Oddly enough, that stuff turns out to be among the most interesting to look at.

From Herbert Bayer's 1932 artwork The Lonely Metropolitan (which heads up this blog and has presumably been included to show that alienation in modernity is a not a new thing) to a 13c silver reliquary in the shape of a hand, there's lots of things you can gawp at, be impressed by, and then try to work out what they're doing there.

Are passenger pigeons really making comeback? Is getting a good cup of coffee genuinely a priority for astronauts? And are Shell really the most trusted company when it comes to offering advice on the environment?

Reliquary (1250-1300)

Passenger Pigeon (About 1880-1900)

Lavazza and Argotec - ISSpresso (2015)

 

Tom Eckersley and Eric Lombers - Scientists Prefer Shell (1936)

Antanas Mockus - Super Citizen Suit (1995-2012)

Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS) - Luchtsingel (2011-15)

While, undoubtedly, flags for Syrian refugees, suits that manage to somehow celebrate citizen power and reduce crime at the same time, and crowdfunded bridges that ease travel around Rotterdam are nice, I'm afraid to report that I left this exhibition feeling that there is more to fear in the future than there is to be positive about. One of the very last things I saw was a toolkit for cryopreservation so that, potentially, my family and friends (who'd presumably all be dead as well, anyway) could bring me back to life once the technology is in place.

I thought about how confused I am by modern life already and then considered the idea of returning to a world that has nobody in it I know or love and is full of technology utterly beyond my comprehension, one that has possibly been devastated by nuclear war or climate change, and I thought to myself "nah, you're alright". I'm not looking forward to dying but when I'm dead, I think I'll stay dead. Someone else can sort the fucking mess out.

Ray & Terry's Longevity Products (2017)

Cryonics Institue - Standby kit (2018)

Sweet FO:Inside the Foreign Office.

"Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way".

BBC2's recent Inside the Foreign Office was, like much in politics at the moment, a bit of a muddled affair. It didn't seem to know if it wanted to do a PR job for the FO and, particularly, the less celebrated civil servants who work for it, or if it wanted to be a hard hitting documentary about the power games and dynamics of international deal making.

Ultimately, it fell between two stools but, despite that, it was often an interesting and illuminating watch. The fact the first episode aired on 15th November 2018, the day the Brexit shit really hit the fan, made it timely too. I wondered just how happy Boris fucking Johnson was that day, the day Britain's foremost political arsonist could don his fireman's outfit and offer to put out the fire that his own craven behaviour had helped start before throwing wood upon.

Boris does not come out of the documentary well at all. But that's not a stitch up job. It's because Boris is a corrupt, incompetent, liar skilled only in the art of putting the blame on others and stabbing people in the back. Occasionally, during this three part series, he talks almost like an actual human, and there are parts where you suspect, incorrectly it turns out, that he may occasionally tell the truth.

You only have to see the appalled faces of his staff as he is announced as Foreign Secretary by Theresa May to see just how unsuited he is to the job and how little respect people who have to work for and with him have for him. On a jaunt to Portugal to promote the oldest alliance in the world he breaks off to film something for his Twitter feed and we see his aides having to constantly remind him that he's making up 'facts' on the spot. He's a snake oil salesman and even by the current lowly standard of UK, and world, politics, a charlatan of the highest order. He can't even arrange Ferrero Rocher for an Ambassador's Reception.

The 17c diplomat Henry Wotton said "an ambassador is sent abroad to lie for his country" and in that at least we cannot dispute Boris's credentials. Wotton's quip was intended as a triple entendre. Lying referred to untruths, lying about doing nothing, and the more euphemistic suggestion that diplomats were screwing their way round the world. In some ways, the perfect job for Boris. If, a disaster for those he's supposed to be serving.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, now degraded by Johnson's appointment, was once seen as the heart of the British Empire and in its Permanent Secretary, one Sir Simon McDonald, we meet someone who still sees it as a hugely prestigious appointment even if Boris does his best to make a mockery of it by quoting Emperor Hirohito of Japan during his unveiling. The civil servants must be wondering what the fuck they'd done wrong to deserve this arsehole.

An arsehole, an egregious twat, who goes on to outline his plans for both Russia and Iran. Two places, in the cases of the Skripal poisonings and the extended imprisonment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, he resolutely and spectacularly failed in. When Roy Hattersley couldn't make an appearance on Have I Got News For You he was famously replaced with a tub of lard. Zaghari-Ratcliffe would have been better served by a tub of lard than by a man who looks like he eats one for breakfast.

As Boris continues to heap shame on both the country and the 14,000 staff at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, we, the viewers, get to meet some of the less famous, but hard working and kind, people who make their living within the establishment. Senay, who works mainly in Yemen, Judith Gough, her majesty's ambassador for Ukrainre who's based in Kiev, and Dan, responsible for Myanmar.

These are honest, well meaning, people who believe in what they do and we see them arrive at the UN in New York where a cut to Donald Trump reminds us that there are people in the world even more amoral, dishonest, and just plain shit than even Boris fucking Johnson (whose lack of attention to detail, nevertheless, remains jaw dropping throughout). Interviewed diplomats manage to say some reasonably nice things about Trump which no viewer will believe they mean. They are, after all, diplomats. This is their job.

There's more serious stuff to discuss. The Litvinienko poisoning, the annexation of Crimea, and Putin's backing of Assad in the Syrian civil war. Boris is adamant that there will be no help for Putin unless Assad goes. Another load of worthless hot air from a vainglorious man whose only interest has ever been in self-promotion.

More serious minded politicians and civil servants congregate to discuss potential ISIS war crimes at a table that soon the UK may no longer be welcome at. The UN Security Council consists of representatives from five nations:- USA, Russia, China, France, and the UK though some have suggested that Britain's diminishing presence on the world stage following the disaster of Brexit should see the UK removed from the council.

As Theresa May, Ivanka Trump, and Amal Clooney put in brief cameos we rejoin Judith Gough who's off to the east of Ukraine where Putin is believed to be arming separatists. Putin, of course, denies this but the war in Ukraine has cost over 10,000 Ukrainian lives so far and Putin is a known, and proven, liar.

There are meetings to discuss other worldwide flashpoints:- the 400,000 Rohingya fleeing Buddhist military extremists in Myanmar, Boko Haram's activities in Nigeria, and Brits who've found themselves in prison in Siem Reap in Cambodia for 'pornographic dancing'. Which turns out to be wearing swimming costumes at a pool party.

Elements of the show are very Yes, Minister (there's even a Sir Humphrey joke) and the tension between human rights abuses and trade is broached a little gingerly. There's lots of footage of serious looking faceless men in suits. We see Brazilian diplomats eyeing up post-Brexit Britain as a country they'll be able to strike a favourable (to them) deal with and learn, unsurprisingly, that outside the EU Britain is now viewed as a wounded animal, away from the safety of the pack, and ripe to be picked off.

Away from Dan Shugg in his huge colonial gaff in Myanmar strumming out Wonderwall on his guitar, we get to see of some of the vital and urgent work civil servants do. The most urgent, and most tense, of all being the case of a seventeen year old girl from Birmingham who has been taken to Iraq and will, on her soon to come eighteenth birthday, be forced into marriage with her cousin.

She wants, understandably, to escape but she needs to get to the safety of the British embassy in Baghdad before she is killed for attempting to do so. Luckily, she makes it - with a lot of help from FO diplomats. It's testament to the great work some of them do but higher up the chain of command there's a lot of 'management class'. Plenty of glib, highly entitled people born into a privilege they can never understand. These 'hail fellows, well met' now, and pretty much always have, run the world. They're making a fucking mess of it.

Which this series, possibly accidentally, highlights. It's, of course, a truly international venture. One minute we're in London, the next in Lisbon or Lagos, later we're looking at the destruction caused by Hurricane Irma in the British Virgin Islands. There are lighter moments too:- a 'tasteful' birthday party for the Queen (sponsored by Shell and Virgin Atlantic!), there's footage of an attempt to sell pollution masks from Cambridge at a Mongolian fashion show, and there's Palmerston, the FO mouser, a cat who has 66,000 followers on Twitter.

The people who come out of it in the best light are the ones who do the actual work, as opposed to the ones who take the glory, but an honourable mention should go to Alan Duncan who, despite being a Tory, appears to be the anti-Boris. He listens, he takes advice, and he does his job with a sense of duty.

Unsurprisingly this gets him way fewer column inches than Boris who, despite being replaced by Jeremy Hunt during filming, lingers like the smell of a bad fart in a lift and wobbles and bullshits his way through the entire series. If he's not trying to sell cheese to the French, resigning over a Brexit he was instrumental in, or falling asleep on aeroplanes, he's lying, lying, and lying some more.

At one point we see Simon McDonald address an annual gathering of almost all of his staff. He talks about how France came out of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 well and how the way Germany was treated following WWI contributed to the destabilisation that led to the rise of fascism and the disasters of WWII. He said how Brexit is handled in Britain, and Europe, is now of comparable importance. That's the size of the task he's dealing with and that's the size of the task we're dealing with. We need more people like Senay, Alan Duncan, and Judith Gough working for our future and a lot less like Boris fucking Johnson.

 If you come away from this show thinking that Trump and Putin are clear and present world dangers and that Boris fucking Johnson is possibly the most inept, and most venal, politician operating in the country at the moment, then I can only say "that might be your view. I couldn't possibly comment".

Turner Prize 2018:Little bit of politics there.

Underwhelming.

That's an adjective I've heard used a few times this week, and it was one that perfectly atriculated my opinion of Tate Britain's Turner Prize exhibition which was back in London following its visit to last year's UK City of Culture, Hull.

Paradoxically however, the experience could also be described as overwhelming. How so? Just the sheer amount of videos to watch. The guy on the door said a visitor would need to spend four hours in there to see everything and time was not with me. Neither were toilet facilities. Four hours without a piss? At my age? Do me a favour.

So it was a case of picking and choosing and, just maybe, this didn't do this year's finalists justice - but, truth be told, they were all a little boring. Which is a shame as the curators had clearly raised their game from the toy trains, piles of crap, and gigantic golden arses of 2016. Bearing in mind, the absolute shitstorm of a year it's been politically, it makes a lot of sense that this was an altogether more serious, considerably more sombre, show.

Luke Willis Thompson - Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries/autoportrait (2016-2018)

So the intentions were very good but the execution was sorely lacking. It's not that politics is, per se, boring. You only have to look at how exciting, and fun, demonstrations can be. I was on the Women's March in 2017 and, again, at the march for a People's Vote a few weeks back. Both occasions showed humanity at its best, uniting together as one to make their voices heard and having fun while doing it.

Some of the placards and art created for these exhibitions was far more powerful than the stuff you're likely to see adorning gallery walls too. But that doesn't mean there's no place for political art in galleries and institutions. There was a wonderful Peter Kennard retrospective at the Imperial War Museum in 2016 and that museum, as well as showing off the hardware of war, does a great job in tracing the story of how and why we keep getting ourselves stuck into these deadly conflicts. They look at the people behind the tanks, rockets, and bombs - and they're all the more affecting for it.

The Turner Prize exhibition is comprised of four galleries that you enter through various openings leading off from a central room complete with comfy furniture and a selection of literature to leaf through. Books, one presumes, that the curators consider to be related to, or supplementary to, the exhibition. There's a Tariq Ali attack on centrism, Utopia by Thomas More, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and a paperback of Watership Down. I wasn't quite sure how they all fitted in, to be honest.

The first room I entered belonged to the somewhat academically named Forensic Architecture. An 'international research agency that uses innovative technological and architectural processes to investigate allegations of state and corporate violence". There's a lot of them and they collaborate with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN so you don't doubt they're good eggs. But good artists? The jury is out.

Using open source software, digital mapping, and 3D modelling alongside witness testimony they are known to provide both courtroom and parliamentary evidence and the collection of films, written evidence, and oral accounts that bedeck their room certainly prove how thorough they are.

But, as someone who knows next to nothing about the Bedouin communities of the Negev desert in southern Israel or, indeed, the police activity that has resulted in their deaths, they don't really give me an 'in'. I don't know where, or how, this story started so I can't pick it up halfway through. They've assumed a deeper knowledge on the visitor's part regarding the subject than most will have. It's like watching an episode of a soap opera you've never seen before. You don't know who the characters are. You don't know the backstories. With Forensic Architecture I know I should care but I really struggle to actually care. Which was a shame.

Forensic Architecture - The Long Duration of a Split Second (2015-ongoing)

Forensic Architecture - The Long Duration of a Split Second (2015-ongoing)

Forensic Architecture - The Long Duration of a Split Second (2015-ongoing)

All the artists on show were, primarily, video artists and Charlotte Prodger was probably the least political of the bunch. It was somewhat self-indulgent (but, hey, most art is) but it was still probably the most interesting thing I saw during my afternoon visit.

BRIDGIT was a manageable thirty-three minute long film that explored Prodger's own queer identity whilst also branching out into the Aberdeenshire countryside, ancient megaliths, and nineties rave culture. There were some lovely shots of local greenery and lakes and Prodger's reflective narration was both relaxing and reasonably interesting. So much so that at one point I nearly dropped off.

Charlotte Prodger - BRIDGIT (2016)

Charlotte Prodger - BRIDGIT (2016)

Charlotte Prodger - BRIDGIT (2016)

Charlotte Prodger - BRIDGIT (2016)

It's probably a sad reflection on an exhibition that possibly the most interesting thing in it could cure insomnia. While Prodger's work was the most interesting I'd contend that the films of Luke Willis Thompson were the most powerful.

Willis Thompson's three films lend dignity to those who have been denied it by society or the state. Each still image fills an entire wall (sadly, it's not possible to ascertain which is which - hence the way I've titled them) and shows a selection of people whose family members have been shot and killed by the police.

We're introduced to Brandon, whose grandmother Dorothy, was shot (by police) in her home in Brixton in 1985, Graeme (whose mother, Joy, was killed during a dawn raid for deportation in Crouch End in 1993), and Diamond Reynolds from Minnesota who, in 2016, broadcast (via Facebook Live) the moments immediately after the fatal shooting of her partner Philando Castile in St Paul. A film that went viral, eventually notching up over six million views.

The officer involved was acquitted of all charges. The tranquility and the darkness of the room, as well as the size of the portraits, makes this a very sincere memorial to those who have passed and a firm indictment of the corrupt, violent, and racist systems that allow this to continue to happen.

But, and it almost feels curmudgeonly to say so, it offers little in the way of answers. It's not art's job to answer questions but to ask them, yet one can't help leaving thinking these appalling and deadly miscarriages of justice must be brought to an end and, hopefully, that was the take away message Willis Thompson wanted to leave us with. If so he has succeeded.

Luke Willis Thompson - Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries/autoportrait (2016-2018)

Luke Willis Thompson - Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries/autoportrait (2016-2018)

I'm really not sure what Naeem Mohaiemen wanted us to take away. His films weren't dull but they were bloody long. Eighty-nine and ninety-three minutes is just too much, too big an ask and I'm afraid to say I wasn't as methodical and conscientious as I have previously been in service to this blog.

Two Meetings and a Funeral used three screens to tell a story, of sorts, about the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. I couldn't really work out what was going on but it was interesting to see appearances from various world leaders and assorted bogeymen of the West. Hey, that's Fidel Castro. Ah, is that what Anwar Sadat looked like? Blimey, doesn't Muammar Gadaffi look young, and quite handsome too in those army fatigues?

Tripoli Cancelled claims to be a 'fiction film' that follows the daily routine of a man who has lived in an abandoned airport for a decade, based on a tale Mohaiemen's father told him of being stranded in Eleftherios Venizelos airport in Athens for nine days in 1977 after losing his passport. 

It's visually pleasing, especially if, like me, you're a fan of faded glamour, crumbling architecture, and ruin porn, but it drags a bit. I'd already looked at lots of slow moving things and I was in the mood for both a piece of excitement and, by then, answering the call of nature.

Naeem Mohaiemen - Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)

Naeem Mohaiemen - Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)

Naeem Mohaiemen - Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)

Naeem Mohaiemen - Tripoli Cancelled (2017)

I came away thinking the Turner Prize is having a bit of an identity crisis. It doesn't seem to really know what it is, and in trying to be all things to all visitors ends up leaving people a bit confused, a bit nonplussed. If I want to get politically enraged I can watch documentaries on the House of Saud or the Assad family. Or I could read the paper, watch the news, go on Twitter or Facebook. Or even engage my family in a conversation about Brexit. I guess I'd visited the Tate hoping this political art would move me but, alas, it did not. It felt for the most part, in this era of shouting and not listening, of yet more sound and fury which, as Shakespeare told us centuries ago, can only signify nothing.

For me the winner should either be Charlotte Prodger or Luke Willis Thompson but, for the most part, this was a missed opportunity to show some hard hitting, politically powerful, art to an audience that may have not been seeking it out. Instead, as you can read below, most people left describing the show as 'dull', 'narrow', 'unengaging', and 'boring'.

Political art can work - and can work very well. I've been moved almost to tears visiting shows by Gideon Mendel and Bouchra Khalili in the last two years. But, sadly, this year's Turner Prize, for the most part, left me cold - and with a bladder fit to burst.

Underwhelming.